I jerked a glance over my shoulder. I’d forgotten how good the Book’s illusions were. It really felt like I’d collided with a body. A warm, breathing, huggable body. Once, I’d played volleyball and drank Coronas on a beach with an illusion of my sister who’d seemed just as real. I wasn’t falling for that again.
It was standing up from the sidewalk, brushing its jeans off, eyes narrowed, rubbing its temple as if struck by a sudden headache, looking startled and confused, searching the space around it as if trying to decipher what weird thing had just happened. An invisible Fae had collided with it, perhaps?
Right. Now I was reading illusionary thoughts into the illusionary mind of my illusionary sister.
Only one thing to do: get out of here before I got sucked in further while yet another of my weaknesses was exploited by the Book’s sadistic sleight of hand.
Clenching my teeth, I dragged myself from the puddle and pushed to my feet. My umbrella had vanished beneath the feet of passersby. With a snarl, I yanked my gaze away from the thing that I knew full well was not my sister and marched without a backward glance out of Temple Bar, into the fog and rain.
—
At the end of the block, Barrons Books & Baubles loomed from the Fae-kissed fog four—no, five—stories tonight, a brilliantly lit bastion of gleaming cherry, limestone, antique glass, and Old World elegance. Floodlights sliced beacons into the darkness from the entire perimeter of the roof, and gas lamps glowed at twenty-foot intervals down both sides of the cobbled street, although beyond it the enormous Dark Zone remained shadowy, abandoned, and unlit.
In the limestone and cherry alcove, an ornate lamp swayed in the wind to the tempo of the shingle that swung from a polished brass pole proclaiming the name I’d restored in lieu of changing it to my own. Barrons Books & Baubles was what it was in my heart and all I would ever call it.
The moment I turned the corner and saw the bookstore, towering, strong and timeless as the man, I nearly burst into tears. Happy to see it. Afraid one day I might turn the corner and not see it. Hating that I loved something so much because things you loved could be taken away.
I would never forget staring down from the belfry on Halloween to find all the floodlights had been shot out. Then the power grid went down, the city blinked out like a dying man closing his eyes, and I’d watched my cherished home become part of the Dark Zone, felt as if part of my soul was being amputated. Each time the bookstore had been demolished by Barrons—first when I vanished with V’lane for a month, then after I killed Barrons and he thought I was fucking Darroc—I’d not been able to rest until I restored order. I couldn’t bear seeing my home wrecked.
God, I was moody tonight. Invisible, lonely, being hunted by my ghouls (at least there were none perched on BB&B!), I couldn’t go kill anything, the Sinsar Dubh wasn’t needling me, and purposeless downtime has always been my Achilles’ heel.
Ice that unpalatable cake with a vision of my dead sister and I wanted nothing more than to smash it into a ceiling and storm off. Unfortunately I’d be right there wherever I stormed off to. With the same vile cake dripping on my head. The thing I wanted to escape was myself.
Seeing the Alina-illusion had rattled me to my core. I had a secret I’d told no one, that I kept so deeply buried I refused to even acknowledge it unless it slammed me in the face unexpectedly like tonight. The vision had cut far too close to it, uncovered it in all its unholy horror, dicked with my head in a way that could completely unravel me. Be seen as proof of my problem. Or not. Or maybe. The jury was still out. Which was precisely the crux of the problem: my jury—the part of me that judged and decided rulings—had been on long hiatus. Far longer than I’d been invisible. Since the night we’d taken the Sinsar Dubh to the abbey to inter it. I hadn’t been myself since that night. Wasn’t sure I ever would be again.
I caught myself sighing, terminated it halfway through and forced myself to smile instead. Attitude was everything. There was always a bright side or two somewhere: I could light the gas fires, dry off, prop a book on a pillow, sprawl out on the chesterfield with my favorite throw and lose myself in a story, knowing Barrons was back, would return at some point, and my mind would soon be fully occupied figuring out how to keep them from trying to make me open the Sinsar Dubh while coming up with some other way to get rid of the black holes.
A breath of contentment feathered the knot of anxiety in my stomach, easing it a bit. Home. Books. Barrons soon. It was enough to work with. All I could do was take one moment at a time. Do my best in that moment. Pretend I was fully invested when I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to invest in anything again.
I was just unlocking the store, about to step inside, when I glimpsed a sodden Dublin Daily plastered up against the door. Propping the door open with a boot, I ducked to fetch the rag.
That was when the first bullet hit me.
5
“And walked upon the edge of no escape, and laughed ‘I’ve lost control’…”
To be fair, I didn’t actually know a bullet had hit me.